OLED Encapsulation: introduction and market status

Article last updated on: Feb 10, 2019

OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) is a flat light emitting technology, made by placing a series of organic thin films (usually carbon based) between two conductors - and these films light up when electrical current is applied. OLEDs are used to make display and lighting panels. OLED displays are thinner, more efficient than LCD displays, and they offer a far better image quality.

One of the most exciting features of OLED displays is that they can be made flexible. Can you image foldable phones that open to become tablets, TVs that can be rolled up when not in use and lighting panels that wrap around round pillars? Flexible OLEDs can enable all of that, and more.

One of the major problems with those organic materials is that they are very sensitive to oxygen and moisture. This means that OLEDs need to be protected - as even a single water or oxygen molecule can harm the OLEDs.

Thin Film Encapsulation (TFE)

With regular (rigid) OLED panels, the solution is simple - you can use a strong glass sheet. Glass is a great barrier, and it is widely used in the display industry and so easy to

For flexible panel, rigid glass is obviously not an option, and in such panels producers use different techniques, collectively referred to as Thin Film Encapsulation, or TFE. TFE is a multi-layer film, made from alternating organic and inorganic layers.

Most organic layer TFEs use an inkjet printing process. Inkjet printing is usually associated with micro-scale OLED deposition, but the technology can also be used to deposit organic TFE materials. Kateeva (an OLED inkjet printing pioneer) has launched an encapsulation inkjet printer system towards the end of 2014, and in 2016 the company announced that it secured the "vast majority" of available TFE orders, and its customers include the world's largest flat-panel display makers in three key Asia regions.

Kateeva says that inkjet printing can achieve exceptional large-area uniformity, and it is the only technology with sufficient accuracy that offers the capability to coat and pattern the edges in a single step. Kateeva produces and markets its own encapsulation materials, but the systems can also use materials from other makers.

The inorganic TFE material deposition can be done in different methods, and several companies are targeting this market. The incumbent technology for the inorganic TFE deposition is Plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) which seems to be currently used by both Samsung and LG Display.

The latest OLED encapsulation news:

Omdia says that the global foldable OLED display market will grow from 700,000 units to 3.9 million in 2020 (a 5X increase) - and will continue its fast growth to reach 73.1 million in 2025.

Omdia says that the main challenge of the foldable OLED market is the reliability of the displays - mainly the cover, the touch sensor and the polarizer films. Display makers will need to adopt new technologies such as ultrathin glass covers (UTG), touch sensors on TFE and color filters on TFE

Meyer Burger announced that it is selling its PixDro inkjet printing business to Germany-based Suss MicroTec SE. The agreed price is $5 million, and the transaction is expected to be completed by the end of February 2020. Meyer Burger reveals that PixDro currently has annual sales of around $8 million. This transaction continues Meyer burger's strategic focus on its solar (PV) business.

PixDro develops and manufactures inkjet printing equipment for for the electronics and semiconductor industries. PixDro started out as a startup in Isarel, and was later integrated into the Netherlands-based OTB-Group, which was later renamed Roth & Rau AG, which was then acquired by Meyer Burger. The company continues its journey and will now be part of Suss MicroTec.

According to a report from Korea, LG Display has halted production at one of its production lines at its E6 production fab, LG's 6-Gen flexible OLED line that commenced production at the end of 2018.

According to the report, the problem lies with LGD's thin film encapsulation equipment - specifically the equipment that deposited the organic particles - which apparently suffers from sub par performance, not good enough for commercial production. LG is using equipment made by its subsidiary LG PRI in the E6-1 line, which is now halted.

Researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) developed a self-powered wearable and washable OLED display device. The whole device is fabricated on textiles and the efficient OLED devices are driven by polymer solar modules.

Both the OLED device and the polymer solar panels are sensitive to moisture and oxygen, and regular OLED encapsulation will not protect such a device when washed. The researches designed a new washable encapsulation barrier using both ALD and spin coating. The device is flexible (curvature radius of 3 mm) and survived 20 washing cycles of 10 minutes each with little change in performance.

The new fab will begin operation in the second half of 2019 - pilot production at first which will be expanded to full scale mass production. The new fab will be built in Samsung's L8 LCD production line in Asan, and will take over one of the two lines currently in operation at the fab. Samsung's initial production capacity will be around 25,000 monthly G8 substrates.

In 2015, the EU launched the €4.4 million Flexolighting project (led by Brunel University London) with an aim to develop new materials, processes and methods to overcome current OLED lighting challenges - including lifetime, lighting uniformity and more.

The project's consortium announced that following the project completion and a rethinking of the complete OLED supply chain, it believes that high efficiency OLED lighting panels can be produced at a cost that is on a similar level with LED lighting.

Japan-based Meidensha Corporation announced that it has developed a new technology to deposit barrier films for bendable displays and electronics. The new process is done at very low temperatures (30 C) which can significantly lower energy costs compared to current plamsa-based processes (usually run at 100-150 C).

The new technology uses a 100% ozone environment. Together with Japan's AIST, Meidensha developed a device that continuously generates pure ozone. This technology was patented earlier this year.

OTI says that in order to enable low-cost production of flexible OLEDs, it designed its own manufacturing technology and advanced materials. This includes the company's own proprietary FlexTorr encapsulation technology.

To achieve such high transparency, AUO optimized the TFT array layer stack, the OLED cathode pattern and the encapsulation. This is the first transparent OLED AUO has developed since 2011. It will discuss this new display at SID Display 2018 - and will hopefully demonstrate it as well.